What is your idea of earthly happiness? To be vindicated in my own lifetime.

Christopher Hitchens
About This Quote

This quote by the writer Horace Walpole, who was one of the first to write a novel and perhaps the first to use the word "poet" in its modern sense, argues that we should not spend our lives seeking worldly happiness – we should spend them seeking vindication – to be proven right. This is a very wise and powerful idea. We should not spend our lives trying to make the world a better place, but we should spend them trying to make ourselves feel better about it.

Source: Hitch22: A Memoir

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